Deep Thoughts … and a Puppy

there is just no way i can share the following guest post without first introducing, sophie.

sophie, bloggieworld. bloggieworld, sophie!

i know, i know… you want to see more.

in the 3 short days we’ve had her, she’s stolen our hearts! (a love note from Berkley, spaying details included)

 

life with twins and a puppy isn’t so bad! especially now that they are ONE MONTH away from turning five! FIVE! (shocking, right?) but that’s another post… today i’m sharing a guest entry from my most favorite person. i think he’s pretty great. Read on to ponder The Welfare of Welfare….

The title is my lame attempt at a hook – especially in a political year.  However, I am not concerned here with politics, but discipleship.  This semester our volunteers read through Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help.  The book discusses how our charitable giving historically cripples the people, communities, and nations it’s meant to help.  Robert Lupton takes a crack at the benevolence model of churches, ministries, and short-term missions projects by asking the question, “Are the people really better off because you arrived?”  Of course, bellies are full, lessons are learned, and wells are dug, but have we empowered the people for the long term?  In fact, Lupton argues that the only long-term success many charities have had is to create dependence on charity.  Case study after case study reinforces this – both in the book and in my personal experiences.    

I realize that such sweeping statements are riddled with complexities that can’t possibly be discussed in a blog.  However, an honest look at many of our initiatives will reveal that, for all the money we spend ($291 billion in 2010 according to Giving USA), little change has been made.  It seems like the missing piece is what we do with our time.  I once had a professor tell me that if you want to know what a person values, look at their wallet and their calendar.  This rings true for churches and charities as well.  It’s relatively easy to find the financial resources to accomplish a short-term task.  What’s nearly impossible is for people to contribute the time and emotional energy it takes to engage in another person’s life for the long-term.  Yet, this is what true ministry to the poor entails.

Poverty generally has very deep roots, far deeper than money can dig.  It involves systems, cultures, values, and hearts – and money has no cure for those things.  Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians that he shared not only the gospel, but also his life.  This is where ministry of the gospel enters in.  Only the redemption of Christ uproots the pride, selfishness, and hopelessness that characterize societies with marginalized peoples.  Christ understood the daunting task of addressing these issues:

Philippians 2:5–7 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.

What do we learn from Christ’s example?  Not that we are better or higher than those we help – that position belongs to Him alone. Having Christ’s attitude means we abandon, we empty, and we let go of that which is important to us for the sake of another person.  God’s challenge to us is to empty ourselves of our rights in order to bring about the peace of Christ to this world.  May we all consider the opportunities that God has already put in front of us to disadvantage ourselves and our schedules for the sake of others.

He is LOVE

 

on the eve of this valentines, amid all things pink & red - not even the lure of pinterest has motivated creative juices in this direction.

it’s a funny day to me, not ha-ha funny but the odd, sometimes sad kind of funny.  where young girls set their gaze on overly priced stuffed animals from walgreens.

i’ll speak for myself, anyway.  painfully adding up the helium balloons and bright bouquets as i slumped through the 7th grade hallways. if only i had a teddy bear to light up my life.

but we all know it’s more than cheesy symbols marking the isles of this occasion. it is the deepest longing of every soul…

to love and to be loved.  

i have struggled to feel loved for most of my life- decades have past since that first longing was awakened… the pursuit of affection & admiration taking on many forms

but all of them leading to despair. 

 

so we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.

God is love … 1 john 14:6

 

yeah, yeah, yeah …Jesus loves me this I know.

but do i really believe it? do i believe the love that God has for me and that it is enough. 

enough to heal the wounded places, comfort the deepest aches, and satisfy my hopes deferred.

i am still learning to believe the blood stained love of my Savior- a love that fails me not. 

to meet Him in my past means seeing it was always His love sustaining and drawing me close.

i love this song by Esterlyn.

He heals the broken Hearted
He binds their wounds
He is Love
He finds those forgotten
Those who’ve been abused
He is Love

He knows your name
A father to the fatherless
A healer of the brokenness

You make Beauty from the ashes
A helper to the helpless
A fighter for the hopeless

You Love
Those who are alone

He comforts the lonely
He hears their Cry
He is Love

He holds the children
Through out the night
He is Love

He knows your name
A father to the fatherless
A healer of the brokenness

You make Beauty from the ashes
A helper to the helpless
A fighter for the hopeless

You love
Those who are alone

Give us your Heart Lord, help us Love the unseen
Give us your Eyes Lord, help us Love those in need

You're a father of the fatherless
A healer of the brokenness

You make Beauty from the ashes
You're a helper to the helpless
A fighter for the hopeless

You love
Those who are alone
Those who are alone
He knows your name

so whether you have a hot date tomorrow night or you cry yourself to sleep…

He knows your name.

He is a helper to the helpless… a fighter for the hopeless.

may you know and believe the love that God has for you. 

happy valentines!

ruining your soul

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”

take a second to let that sink in

we are Souls cloaked in skin & bone, flesh and blood.

not sure about you but this isn’t how i live & think. much more prone to pay mind to the external, not excluding the sun kissed spots & fine lines mapping their course to middle aged life.

i have been challenged by what it means to keep careful watch over my own heart & soul. the Psalmist repeatedly spoke of his soul being pursued by enemies, downcast and then restored. trusting Him as the Keeper of my soul, i still have responsibility in it’s condition.

i can either nurture or ruin, protect or assault.

many things wage war against my soul: comparison, perfectionism, jealousy, self-promotion, approval addiction, toxic relationships …all having the potential to deeply affect my fundamental identity.

one of the greatest of these is a a dirty little word.

legalism

embraced by men but rejected by Christ 

i see so much of myself in matthew 23

Woe to me   

They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger… they do all their deeds to be noticed by men…They love the place of honor…But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in….You blind men, which is more important, the offering, or the altar that sanctifies the offering?..Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of self-indulgence….You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

like i said, Woe to me

Woe to us

legalism concerns itself with the external versus the internal, ruining the soul.

as tim kimmell, author of this race-to-the-store-&-buy-one-today book, Grace Based Parenting, writes

legalistic patterns emphasize the SYMBOLS of christian behavior over the SUBSTANCE of christian living. it grants more power & influence to the external forces of the world system than it does to the internal power & presence of God.

white washed tombs …full of dead bones

legalism crawls onto our pews & into our hearts. it seduces us to hide our frailties from one another, to refrain from vulnerability because we all know that “good christians” have it all together.

good christians have perfect marriages & well behaved children. good christians read their bibles everyday. good christians follow the standards of righteousness.

woe to us who shut off the kingdom of God from people with our good christian antics.

if only the world knew there was no such thing

legalism perverts the gospel. it says His work is unfinished. that i must earn His love & acceptance by being more, doing more, giving more, attending more, sacrificing more. it believes the lie that His grace is not sufficient. not for me & certainly not for others.

Oh, foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ's death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross. Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? galatians 3:1-3

even for us who believe, who claim salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone …how quickly we gravitate toward being perfected by “good” works, crippled by that very first lie… we must be unloved by God.

the true gospel is this…

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5:21

i am not, could not, will not ever be good enough. i will never reach the end of my growing list of arbitrary standards.

only the finished work of the cross declares me righteous, fully accepted, purchased by His blood, forgiven of all sin… according to the riches of His grace, that He has freely lavished on me.

any other belief, no matter how well disguised results in fear, failure, pride, judgment, estrangement, spiritual death.

legalism ruins the soul. 

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness seems to hide His face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh may I then in Him be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.

may our hope be built on nothing less.

summer lovin’, had me a blast

summer lovin’ happened so fast! everyone needs a little Grease in their life.

only a few weeks away from returning to work…here is a recap of our summer days… a driftin’ away.  

with record breaking numbers in TX this summer, we were happy to stay water logged.

the twinks first crawfish broil!

i rearranged their bedroom to create usable work spaces. we have so many age appropriate materials that never get used because they haven’t been super accessible until now.

this is where IKEA comes in. one of my all time fave places! check out these shelves for only $39 each! organization- presto!

the above wall hanging storage bins are great for markers, stickers & more! and you can’t beat their colorful $12 chairs & $25 tables. 

needless to say we’ve had gobs of creative art going on this summer!

you are looking at creative genius!

we had a gabazillion weddings this summer, which we LOVED…especially because i was able to squeeze in time with out of town friends & their wee ones.

this was one of our favorite weddings…we love zach & kathryn!! what an honor to celebrate with them.

we had a crazy, good time…which might have included vanilla ice’s- ice ice baby.

fun times with fun friends!the above pics are from the first wedding d&b have attended. we did lot’s of prep work since they will be in their first wedding this october! aunt amber is getting married…ryan is officiating, i am a bridesmaid & the twinks are the flower girl & ring bearer. should be fun! and by fun i mean chaotic! :) we can’t wait!

here’s to squeezing the life out of these last weeks… fun in the sun, loved ones & lot’s of zzzzz!

hope you are enjoying your summer wherever you are!

community: the buzz word

i can still remember the first time i heard it. a few years after relocating back to college station my best friend, jamie, posed an unordinary question. let me first say that it has never been unusual for her to engage my heart with a question that shakes something loose in me.

19 years old, a carefree conversation behind the wheel of just another teenage adventure.

so how would you respond if God told you that ya’ll needed to break up?

but why would He do that? for once i was sortakinda yielded in this area…His sanctification well at work in me.

we broke up within a few short months

like i said, shaking things loose

fast forward several years…another unordinary question

so do you feel like you are experiencing real community?

i’m sorry, what? can you say that again?

to my recollection i stammered off the names of a dozen people that filled my time, from bible studies & coffee chats to Gilmore Girls viewing parties.

long after our phone date ended the words rattled around in my mind

 real community

you see my life was full of people…but could i answer the question when i had no understanding of it?

i am still learning what it means to walk in biblical community but a few things are clearer to me since then.

we were made for it & our souls suffer without it 

from the beginning of creation God established that it was not good for man to be alone. we need deep & abiding relationships with safe, like-minded people. Hebrews 10:24 admonishes for us to not give up meeting together but to spur one another on toward love & good deeds…to encourage one another all the more.  

this is God’s heart for us

not that we simply come together in frequency but that we do so with purpose.

community means taking off the mask of religion, laying down our pretenses, and getting messy. only then can we really enter into life with others & let them love us in all of our unlovliness.

it takes God-sized courage & this coming from someone who has prided herself on “being transparent”. only recently have i discovered how deep my need is and it has rocked me.

i mean, really rocked me. 

hi! my name is andrea and i am needy. because you see, under this glossy surface are deep wounds, irrational fears & nagging insecurities. will you be my friend & remind me of Whom i belong to?

thanks be to God for cultivating community in my life- multiple people that do just this. they receive me as i am while reminding me who i am because of Him.

community doesn’t just happen… we must first value it, then seek it out.

the health of our souls depend on it

ryan recently received a question about community from a former college student. i learned from his response & have a feeling you might also. 

Question: "Do you think true community can exist through phone and email?"

Response: The short answer is, no, not if you can help it.  If you're forced to because of being in an isolated environment (missionaries overseas, long-distance dating, etc.), then obviously that's all you can do.  But, if there is anything you can do to actually share life with people, you must make it happen, even if you're attendance is sporadic. 

When we are talking on the phone, etc., the only insight people have in our lives is how we interpret it for them.  Unfortunately, we're not honest people (with ourselves or with others)... even the most humble of us can still shell out a good amount of manipulation.  We need people that interact with our lives, people that can sift through the BS and direct us toward Jesus.  And, we need to do that for others also.

We need to have people whose house we can go to after tragedy that will cry with us, or who can hear us work through our family dysfunction, etc.

Also, we can still be extremely lonely and talk on the phone for hours a day.  There is something about presence that "cures" loneliness.  And, loneliness can be a very dangerous spiritual condition.  

Did you know that for the first 300 years, the single most important act the church participated in was to eat together? not listening to sermons or even doing justice but breaking bread. The reason is that there is power in being physically present.

They understood that who we really are is frighteningly contingent upon who is around us.  Even today, communion is a critical part of liturgies around the world. Why is that?

So, although phone, skype, email are great tools for a few occasions, it can also be a very tempting false substitute for biblical community. 

It's just enough to help us think we are linked with others, but not enough to be truly and deeply transformed by them. 

I'm learning this stuff myself ... 
Ryan

so it’s my turn to ask the question… do you feel like you are experiencing real community?

may we enter into life with people & be transformed!

today is my last tomorrow

this blog post title caught your eye didn’t it?

because let’s face it, if you are like me (or the other bazillion people like us on planet earth) your mantra goes something more like this… 

i mean why do today what i can put off for tomorrow?

whose with me? 

i’m in a bible study with a few women, the kind of women that live out loud… exposing those raw, ugly places that are desperate for truth and grace. while sharing a personal struggle, friend-whose-name-i-won’t-mention said, “today is my last tomorrow.”

today is my last tomorrow.

does that hit you like it hits me?…right in the gut like the rotavirus.

it begs the question of me, “so what will you do with today?” 

because at least in my life too many tomorrows add up to mostly never and a million missed opportunities to taste abundant life and extend it to others.

i’m not talking about laundry people, for whomever would declare life in such a task. i find that no matter how many tomorrows i put it off or however swiftly i take it by storm, laundry migrates.

i am talking about the good stuff…the stuff of the heart, mind and soul. the hidden things that drive our thoughts, behaviors and relationships…both for good and for bad.

only you know what those things are for you….or maybe just like me you stuff them down, wrapping them up with the busyness of life, tying them off in a bow of denial.

so long as we present well, what does it matter if we wait until tomorrow?

it matters much.

for many years i have sensed God asking me to lay some things down.

go figure- i said no. again and again. too afraid to peel back the perfectly pressed corners of paper, exposing my tattered box of hopes deferred.

to take a good hard look is painful…the debilitating kind of pain i’m certain causes internal bleeding somewhere within me.

through a series of events He is teaching me afresh that i can trust Him with my offerings, no matter how broken their condition. i can say yes to Him today because He meets me in the deep places.

i am also learning that saying yes to Him sometimes means saying no to others.

shocking, right?

YesGirl that i am, that’s about as far as i’ve gotten with this seemingly far off, yet life shattering truth.

will let you know when i am closer to wrapping myself around it but i do know it changes things. it forces light into darkness, exposing things for what they really are, and sometimes for what they are not.

more pain

more grace

and so i declare (me, myself and i) that today is my last tomorrow

i will choose today

i will say yes to ripping off another layer, exposing the pain

to having His light so shine on me

to letting His rescue come 

For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

2 Corinthians 4:6-9

let’s choose today together, shall we

party pics have arrived!

this being the official 4th birthday and all, i think party pics are in order.

it’s no secret that small people love superheroes, so this party theme made for some SUPER fun!

several people have asked about how i did this invite…

Printshop is dreamy, but with a few shape text boxes and some colorful Word Art, you can do something similar in Microsoft word. i snapped the pics in our backyard and edited on picnik with the HDR effect to give it a cartoonish feel.  

the same week the twinks decided on a superhero party, i saw this table cloth & birthday banner in the check out line of old navy. they looked comic-y enough so i designed the word bubbles around the banner.

i made the masks from felt & will have them to thank when i am diagnosed with carpel tunnel. you can get 3 masks per sheet of felt, so it is an inexpensive gift if you are in the market! the party favor containers were in the party section at walmart… another super find!

the character rings were a hit, along with these super cute crime fighters.

now on to this incredible photo backdrop, painted by two amazing college girls! if i could facebook tag them here i would but a bloggy shout out will have to do for now. thanks, jerica & andrea!! and thanks to their roomie, taylor, for the inspiration! while i am in the spirit of thanksgiving, thanks  also to mandy for taking pics for me!!

by the way, a very special thanks to my mother in law, mimi, for transforming two elmo-ish cakes into these for me…

brilliant me forgot to put in the order for two small cakes, assuming they would have plenty the morning of. you see where this is going. mimi to the rescue. two stores later, and two orange elmo cakes later. (i’m sure some sesame street lover is correcting me on the other side of their computer but elmo is the best i can come up with). they had eyeballs and hair and look at them now! BIG thanks to mimi & cousin amy…especially for dealing with my perfectionism!

back to the oh-so-fab backdrop….so i texted our college supergirls on thursday when my time was running out and they joyfully worked their magic so i could have it done in time for the party. are they not UHmazing!?? the subjects below are pretty great too.

the early childhood educator in me cannot miss an opportunity to provide developmentally appropriate play experiences, which is where gotham city came from…

superfriends were able to literally paint the town. need a creative way to pass the time with your wee ones this summer? put out a few boxes with paint, rolls of tape, cups of water, sponges, brushes, you name it…then just see what happens. as they say, a child’s play is a child’s work!

the kids also loved decorating their very own super hero masks…and you can’t beat the prices at oriental trading company.

so there is no such thing in TX as an outdoor event in june without water. and what is more fun than a water slide? especially when it takes up half of your backyard. ryan and i laughed out loud (more than once) at the size of this inflatable beast! if you can’t tell, it was more than twice the height of our privacy fence! so not joking.

it also was no joke how much fun was had! their faces say it all!

thanks to our family & friends that joined us for our super celebration! birthday letter coming soon.

ka-zaaaam!

the supertwinks turn FOUR in two short weeks. FOUR!

just.like.that.

i think the coolest kids in the world are four… which is why i fell in love with teaching head start. grown up just enough to hold a silly, sometimes poignant conversation. still small enough to wipe the tears away from a skinned knee or bruised heart.

and so it is… FOUR. old enough to have been in my classroom. this realization leaves me dismayed, a childish “so not fair” swells up in protest.

and it isn’t. the hands of time tick round. i scratch my head and ask that age old question, “where did it all go?” 

so now that i’ve got us all depressed… the good news about turning four is that it’s party time. and you know how i love a good party.

especially when it involves costumes.

my sweet girl, you know the one who prefers “basketball shorts” over ruffles and batman over barbie? she just might be more excited about the party theme than her superbrother. what do you think?

  

here is the party invite i made this weekend…

stay tuned for party pics!